Analysis of the culture of safety among professionals in an intensive care unit

Introduction: Patient safety culture is of concern to the scientific community because failures in health care, even today, are causes of many damages to the patient. This study aimed to analyse the perception of safety attitudes of professionals in the intensive care unit with respect to time experience and gender. Methodology: A cross-sectional study to assess patient safety culture among professionals in the intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in Brazil, using the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. The descriptive and variance analysis presented significance level (α) of 5%. A total of 138 professionals in the adult intensive care unit of the following areas: medical, nursing, physical therapy, psychology, nutrition, and management Data were collected from 1 to 15 July. Results: There was a predominance of women in most positions and in professionals with more than five (5) years of experience 87 (63.0%). In the analysis of the safety culture among professionals, there was an average score of 60.72 in men and 56.76 in women, and scores were 57.77 and 57.67 for those with less than and greater than or equal to five (5) years of experience, respectively. There was strong agreement among males for Climate Working Team (74.28) and in the group with low experience for Job Satisfaction (75.05). Conclusions: The safety attitude of both genders professionals proved not strengthened. The men presented themselves strengthened to the Working Climate Team domain, which measures the quality of collaboration and communication. There was satisfaction in the work of young workers and high perceived stress in those with more time in the job.